In practically every pet store and other stores there may be purchased a wide variety or toys for domestic animals such as cats and doge. Different types of balls, bones, toys which squeak etc. can be purchased. In almost every case, each of the toys is passive. The only way that any of the toys can become movable is through the toy being thrown by a human being or upon the toy being moved by the animal itself.
It is well known that domestic animals love to chase anything that moves. One objective of the present invention is to construct a pet toy which automatically projects a randomly moving light image of a prey, such as an image of a mouse or bird, thereby freeing the owner from the sometimes onerous and time consuming duty of entertaining a bored, unhappy pet, and at the same time providing the pet owner with the pleasurable entertainment of watching his/her active pet. It is the unique utilization of this chase instinct in most animals by this pet toy that makes it especially attractive and useful as a pet toy.
More particularly, the pet toy of the present invention is a pet toy that projects a moving image into a room, as determined by a computer chip, so that a pet may be entertained by the moving image without requiring a person to be in the room to move the image. The pet toy comprises an upright housing containing batteries and supported by a heavy base with a ball bearing unit at the top of the housing. The ball bearing unit has a lamp unit attached thereto. A plurality of glass units with various cut-outs that may be removably attached to the lamp unit so that the glass units may be used to change the image projected by the lamp unit. A control unit contained in the housing controls the speed of the rotatable ball bearing unit to control the speed of the moving light image.